Letter to Karl Marx, March-April 1879

Author(s) Jules Guesde
Written March 1879


An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in Science & Society. A Marxian Quarterly, Vol. IV, No. 1, New York, 1940. First published in full in the language of the original French, in Le Combat marxiste. No. 19, Paris, mai 1937
Published in English in the present length for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


[JULES GUESDE TO MARX][1]

IN LONDON

[Excerpt]

Paris, [March-April 1879]
Hôtel Necker, Rue de Sèvres

Very dear Citizen,

I could not be more grateful to you for the sympathy and esteem which you have been kind enough to show me, and I ask you to believe that, for my part, although I find myself in disagreement with you on the subject of the International,a I have always professed the deepest admiration for the author of the Communist Manifesto[2] and Capital.

In fact this disagreement, I can say it now, would never have arisen—on my part at least—had I known you better.

For everything that you express in your letter coincides with what I think—and have always thought.

If I am a revolutionary, if I believe like you in the need for force to solve the social question in a collectivist or communist way, I am also like you the convinced opponent of movements à la Cafiero which—useful though they may be in Russia—do not correspond in France, or in Germany, or in Italy, to any of the demands of the situation. You were able to see this from my campaign in the Radical against the Comic Opera insurgents in Benevento.[3]

Like you I am convinced that before thinking of action, one must set up a party, a conscious army, by means of active, continuous propaganda.[4]

Finally, like you I do not believe that the simple destruction of what exists will be enough to build what we want, and I think that for a more or less considerable period the impulse, the direction should come from above, from those who are 'better informed'.

It is in these conditions that, since my return, I have been busy setting up this 'independent and militant workers' party' which you so rightly declare to be 'of the highest importance' in view of the events which are being prepared.

But for this party to be both 'independent' and 'militant', it is essential that the French proletariat which is to constitute it should be delivered from the dupery of bourgeois Radicalism and that, on the other hand, it should be persuaded that its emancipation can only be achieved through struggle...

If I were not so ill — and so poor—I would announce my next visit to you,[5] so much would I like to have a long talk with you. But I do not dispose of myself either physically—or pecuniarily. And I must limit myself to sending you all my thanks and assuring you of my complete devotion

To you and to the Revolution

Jules Guesde

  1. ↑ Jules Guesde's letter was a reply to Marx's non-extant letter of early 1879.
  2. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party.
  3. ↑ On 25 (13) December 1877 the Russian army embarked on the decisive offensive on the Balkan theatre of war. Having crossed the Balkans, Russian troops entered Sofia on 4 January 1878 (23 December 1877), smashed the last Turkish army in the battle of Philippopol (Plovdiv) on 15-17 (3-5) January 1878, and entered Adrianople (Edirne) on 20 (8) January and continued their advance towards Constantinople (Istanbul). On 31 (19) January, Turkey was compelled to sign an armistice in Adrianople.
  4. ↑ Here and below Jules Guesde quotes Marx.
  5. ↑ Guesde arrived in London in May 1880 to discuss the programme of the French Workers' Party with Marx, Engels and Lafargue. They met at Engels' flat, where Marx dictated the preamble to the programme (see present edition, Vol. 24, p. 340). The practical part of the programme was drafted by Guesde with Lafargue's assistance, and Marx and Engels introduced a number of more precise definitions.